Business Insider India has updated its Privacy and Cookie policy. We use cookies to ensure that we give you the better experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we\'ll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies on the Business Insider India website. However, you can change your cookie setting at any time by clicking on our Cookie Policy at any time. You can also see our Privacy Policy.
A Twitter 'bug' led to the address of an Arizona high school trending on the platform 'for hours.' What else could go wrong?
A Twitter 'bug' led to the address of an Arizona high school trending on the platform 'for hours.' What else could go wrong?
Paige LeskinFeb 5, 2020, 23:13 IST
Twitter is able to show users personalized trends based on a trove of personal information, including your location, who you follow, and interests it discerns from your account activity.
Multiple Twitter users discovered in December that their "trends for you" tab included the address of a high school in Scottsdale, Arizona, although less than 50 tweets using the address appeared recently on the platform.
Twitter told Business Insider that the trending address was a "bug," but it raises questions about how closely the platform monitors its trends and what sensitive or misleading information could be shown on these lists of personalized trends.
These trends have been "hacked" by users with bad intentions to spread porn, as well as misleading information during the 2016 presidential election. The trending of the high school address may show how easy it is to influence these trends, and whether Twitter is aptly prepared for the 2020 election.
On a mild Thursday afternoon in December, students at a high school in Scottsdale, Arizona, were slogging through the second half of their class schedule. They likely had no idea their school was of interest to a smattering of people around the United States, who suddenly saw the high school's address surfaced on Twitter.
Advertisement
Among trending hashtags celebrating Frank Sinatra's 100th birthday and making fun of a political party's misspelling of Brexit, the address of Coronado High School appeared in December in my Twitter's "trends for you" list, a continually updated personalized catalog of trending terms that Twitter thinks are of particular interest to me and other people on Twitter with similar interests. Curious about the address (which won't be mentioned in this story for privacy reasons), I clicked on the trend to discover what Twitter indicated everyone was talking about.
However, tweets mentioning the address were hard to find, unlike the thousands of tweets that typically show up under a trending topic. But I wasn't the only one stumped by this trending address - so were a 16-year-old in Georgia, a student attending Occidental College, an employee at an ad agency in downtown Detroit, and others who are all seemingly unconnected.
What Business Insider discovered from this trending discrepancy draws into question the opaque process in how Twitter manages and monitors its trending topics. It also raises concerns about whether Twitter is aptly prepared for the 2020 presidential election, after 2016's race was marred by bot accounts who were successful in spreading fake news and influencing voter opinion by manipulating the platform's "trending" topics.
With more than 20,000 students in the Scottsdale Unified School District, it's difficult to get any one-on-one time with superintendent John Kriekard. That's why the district regularly holds "Coffee with Kriekard," a series of events where parents and community members can show up to hear from the superintendent and ask questions.
For December's event, the district's communications office went big. It harnessed the Twitter accounts for all of its schools, filled with students from kindergarten to 12th grade, to advertise the event. At 1:13 p.m. local time on December 12, all 30 Twitter accounts posted the same tweet, word-for-word, inviting the community to the "Coffee with Kriekard" event the following week and sharing details about the event's location: Coronado High School.
With the majority of the district's Twitter accounts at less than 500 followers, the tweets attracted few likes and little engagement. Nonetheless, the high school's address landed in the personalized trending tab of at least a dozen people (Twitter wouldn't say how many accounts were shown this particular trending topic, but Twitter said the trend was showing for many users for "hours"). While some Twitter users saw it and shrugged, others took to the platform to question why they were seeing the trend — and, of course, share memes and GIFs to express their confusion.
Although it's still not quite clear what happened, it appears that these 30 coordinated tweets allowed the Colorado school district to manipulate Twitter's trends. However, this isn't the first time that this has happened: Accounts and with less innocuous intentions than coffee meetings have been able to "hack" into Twitter trends before to amplify their desired messages and topics, and get them to appear on the home pages of the platform's millions of users.
Now, this latest example of manipulated Twitter trends raises questions about whether the platform has learned from its previous mistakes, and whether it's adequately prepared to deal with bad actors looking to get their messages trending in the future.
Besides myself, two other 20-something Business Insider reporters in New York City said they saw the trend. When Business Insider reached out to some of the other Twitter users who confirmed they noticed the address trending, it was harder to figure out what we had in common. There was no discernible explanation why an address in Arizona was shown to three people in New York; a college student in California studying music composition; three 16-year-olds in Georgia, Illinois, and central Virginia; and an employee at an ad agency in downtown Detroit.
The FBI, the NFL, and vegetables: how Twitter's "trends for you" works
To figure out how an Arizona high school's address showed up in personalized Twitter trends, it's important to break down how the "trends for you" tab works. According to Twitter's website, personalized trends are determined by a Twitter algorithm based on three aspects: who you follow, your interests, and your location.
Although finding out who you follow and where you're located are straight-forward, your "interests" are based on the trove of data and information Twitter gathers from you on a daily basis, from tweets you like and retweet to places you travel. Some of that information is stored in a little-known tab hidden in your privacy settings, called "interests from Twitter." You can find step-by-step instructions for finding that list here.
This list of hundreds of terms — ranging from general topics and issues, to names of journalists and celebrities, to companies and sports teams — is "based on your profile, activity, and the Topics you follow," Twitter says at the top of this interest list.
Twitter confirmed to Business Insider that this list of interests determines what shows up in each user's personalized trends tab, although the company emphasized that there's "a bunch of inputs" that go into it.
Business Insider was given access to nine Twitter accounts belonging to users who had the Arizona high school show up in their Twitter trends. According to our analysis, these nine people had around 80 common terms found on their interest lists. There were some terms all nine users shared that could explain why they were shown a trend about a community meeting with a superintendent, including "coffee," and "education."
However, it fails to explain why users across the country were shown a small, local event happening in Arizona. The shared interests among users also included a slew of extraneous terms, including "vegetables," "NFL," "hip-hop and rap," and "Federal Bureau of Investigation."
Hacking Twitter trends and 2020
A Twitter spokesperson told Business Insider that the high school address' place on the trending list for some users was a "bug." It was up for a "few hours" before Twitter's team took notice and took it down.
Twitter said the term failed to meet the platform's "standards" for what trends on the platform — not because it was an address and location of a high school, but because there weren't enough tweets and mention to warrant its presence.
Twitter's handling of this incident raises questions about what is allowed to trend for users. Under its rules for trends, Twitter doesn't allow anything containing "profanity or adult/graphic references," topics that "incite hate," or those that violate Twitter's rules on harassment and hateful conduct.
I asked Twitter whether my home address would be allowed to trend on the platform. Twitter said that if an address "can be found on the internet," it's considered "public," and thus fair game for Twitter's trends. The fine line for what constitutes as "public" is murky, especially when it comes to situations like "doxxing," where private, sensitive information is published online for the public to see.
However, the most high-profile incident of Twitter hacking comes from the 2016 presidential election. Studies have found that bots and automated accounts on Twitter were instrumental in the spread of false claims and misleading headlines over truth and accuracy. Lawmakers have criticized Twitter for its failure to protect voters, and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey admitted in 2018 that the platform has yet to figure out how to stamp out false info.
As we approach the 2020 election, it's unclear whether Twitter is ready to prevent a repeat of the events of 2016. Twitter has removed millions of tweets and bot accounts that have spread disinformation, and announced in late 2019 is was banning political ads on its site.
But if 30 tweets posted on Twitter are enough to get a high school address trending and left online for hours, it leaves open questions about what else could trend before Twitter takes notice.
